Not only is the Qur'an a lot less prone to alteration than that of the Bible or Talmud, it is indeed a scholarly fact that the Qur'an remains unchanged. This is also consistent with my notes of the first-year religions class I took - the Qur'an has been preserved. There are very weak stabs at refuting the preservation of the Qur'an with the "Uthman's Quran" arguments but they in all honestly hold no merit.

I know I see different.

And thanks man it was a great question. I know I didn't do it justice.

Unchanged doesn't necessarily mean it was right to begin with however. It could actually be a sign of subborness and refusal to admit something is wrong (kinda like Bettmans insistance that all is well in Phoenix).

Unchanged doesn't necessarily mean it was right to begin with however. It could actually be a sign of subborness and refusal to admit something is wrong (kinda like Bettmans insistance that all is well in Phoenix).

I'm aware of that.

I'm also aware that I think it's the Truth and that you think it's nothing more than a book (maybe a good one at best).

I'm also aware that I think it's the Truth and that you think it's nothing more than a book (maybe a good one at best).

It also suffers from the same major flaw the Bible has, it is very open to interpretation, if it wasn't there wouldn't be so many different denominations and varied viewpoints regarding it.

Personally it seems to me that many religious people aren't interested in the truth, only in protecting their current beliefs, regardelss of what facts are presented to them, without change there can be no growth, only stagnation.

It also suffers from the same major flaw the Bible has, it is very open to interpretation, if it wasn't there wouldn't be so many different denominations and varied viewpoints regarding it.

Indeed, but Christianity isn't it's own derivation, it's originally a perversion of Judaism that just keeps getting re-told and re-interpreted as time goes on.

Personally it seems to me that many religious people aren't interested in the truth, only in protecting their current beliefs, regardelss of what facts are presented to them, without change there can be no growth, only stagnation.

Not just protecting their beliefs, but I can't tell you how many other Christians I knew from church who believed to play it safe just in case there is a "God". It's an interesting concept because in one hand you have an omnipotent deity who knows everything, including your intentions, and requires you to love them, but apparently is too dumb to understand they're being patronized for someone hedging their bets against damnation. It's one of an enormous amount of logical fallacies, but this one is pretty stupid and selfish.

Not only is the Qur'an a lot less prone to alteration than that of the Bible or Talmud, it is indeed a scholarly fact that the Qur'an remains unchanged. This is also consistent with my notes of the first-year religions class I took - the Qur'an has been preserved. There are very weak stabs at refuting the preservation of the Qur'an with the "Uthman's Quran" arguments but they in all honestly hold no merit.

I know I see different.

And thanks man it was a great question. I know I didn't do it justice.

The general consensus is that it's unchanged since it was compiled. There's no way to tell if the book itself is a changed version of Muhammad's original words or not. I have a hard time believing that of all the people that had to come together to contribute their part of Muhammad's words to the Quran, not a single one of them made a mistake. Still, the time lag between when the ayat were given and when the Quran was compiled likely wasn't long enough for any major alterations.

With the hadith, however, I'm a lot more skeptical of their historical veracity, but that's a side point here.

Because religion is based on faith. And faith is by definition an irrational stand. When religion gets into politics, it simply does not have the same effect as when non-religious gets into the political system. Power is given to people by "god" in a religious political system and this type of thinking allows for a loop that society has trouble breaking.

Yes, it was the priests that were suppose to be the people of "God". Clearly god doesn't care that people are corrupt in his name.Regardless of the state of Christianity of the time, it was still a religion. Look at the middle east right now. it's in a huge mess.

Yeah, it is the biggest influence. Look at the USA. It's stopping stem cell research, people are still arguing over a women's right to choose, and some parents refuse medical care for their children because it's "against their religion". Completely irrational.

This comes back to the presupposition that reason is necessarily good and faith is necessarily bad. Reason is good. Faith is ba-a-a-d. (Animal farm anyone? I haven't read any orwell in years but somehow he's popped up a few times in this thread)

On the philosophic level, for a starting point, you have to presuppose that your senses and faculties are functioning and showing you an accurate view of reality and a real world around you...and that you aren't insane (Shutter Island) or in a world of someone else's making (Inception) or being completely manipulated (The Matrix).

This isn't a universally held belief: Traditional Buddhists for one don't believe in the real existence of a physical reality. In this one area at least, Buddhists don't depend on a presupposition for their philosophy, while Westerners do.

You also have to presuppose that your intellect and ideas should be used in the world to create and change reality. Again this is not a belief universally held: Eastern practices like Mantras and Trancedental Meditation support the idea that thought should be eliminated to reach a transformation.

I pressume if you are a Westerner who supports rationalism you hold these two presuppositions. Neither of these presuppositions is irrational, but certainly neither presupposition can be proven. You therefore hold them in faith.

Without these and other presuppositions, which were taken and developed by the West from many sources including the Ancient Greeks and especially the Bible, Western Civilization would never have developed.

So, I hope you'll agree, faith is not necessarily a bad thing.

On a practical side, there is no doubt that rational decisions through history have not always been good. Think of Eugenics, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Stalin's Purges.

Faith-based decisions have produced a lot of good, as I mentioned before.

I find it quite odd you think its irrational to be opposed to abortion. Scientifically human life begins at conception, not at birth. This is the most rational position. Its quite irrational to believe that ending a life while in the womb has nothing morally wrong about it while killing him/her a few months, weeks, days, or seconds later immediately after exiting the birth canal is the worst moral crime. It would be much more rational to make life significant after the baby begins breathing, or after reaching a certain mental ability, or when it can clothe and feed itself.

On that note, why make Infanticide illegal at all? Animals often let the weak one of the litter die afterall. "Survival of the fittest" seems a sensible, rational idea doesn't it? India for one has always practiced infanticide...although it is much more taboo now after colonialism. Surely if we are to be tolorant of other cultures we should not object to this, and perhaps even in solidarity join in the practice ourselves?

and my point is we should not consider anyone to be our enemy in any sense , as scorpio's quote says love your enemies , but if you love some one how can they be your enemy , and is not jesus a source of inspiration to members of your religion .

That is the idea: If you love your enemy, how can he be your enemy any more? This is what I advocated, and which I don't think you understood.

Here's a great Youtube series I found the other day. As someone who was never overly religious, even when I believed in God, it was really interesting to have the thought process of someone deeply religious explained to me in a way I could understand. I think the series would also help believers understand why some people stop believing in God. It's quite long, but well worth it in my mind.

People see what they want to see. The trick is to see what's really there.

No, the trick is obscurity and superstition, since directness and evidence is sorely lacking to justify the existence of any deity or countless supernatural claims. If you used your five senses with a dab of reason to "see what's really there" you'd find nothing, as usual. The way adults make stuff up and even lie to themselves to believe the things they do is nothing short of humorous.

It also suffers from the same major flaw the Bible has, it is very open to interpretation, if it wasn't there wouldn't be so many different denominations and varied viewpoints regarding it.

Personally it seems to me that many religious people aren't interested in the truth, only in protecting their current beliefs, regardelss of what facts are presented to them, without change there can be no growth, only stagnation.

This is a great post. And you're right it applies to all religions. Every religion has vague points that are open to interpretation.

In all of the major religions there are even points that contradict eachother. So you end up with a situation where it's not possible to literally follow any of the major texts word for word. So people are essentially forced to cherry pick laws and punishments to enforce.

As for the idea that any of the texts have not been changed. That is total BS. They were all originally written in languages that no longer exist and then translated several times through the ages. Translation is always open to interpretation. Not only that the meaning of words with any given language changes over time. So even if there was never any translation, the texts wouldn't mean the same thing. Even within one language in one time, a word can mean different things in neighbouring towns.

It also suffers from the same major flaw the Bible has, it is very open to interpretation, if it wasn't there wouldn't be so many different denominations and varied viewpoints regarding it.

Personally it seems to me that many religious people aren't interested in the truth, only in protecting their current beliefs, regardelss of what facts are presented to them, without change there can be no growth, only stagnation.

This is actually partially true. While there is no doubt that different interpretations and denominations exist, the Qur'an is actually not open to interpretation. This of course does not mean that individuals and/or groups have not taken it upon themselves to fulfill their own interpretations.

In order to interpret it, one must have sufficient knowledge, which includes knowledge of the proper sources of interpretation (a concept in Islam known as Usool At-Tafsir).

The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) gave a stern warning to Muslims when he said; "those who speak about the Qur'an with no knowledge, let them take their places in the hellfire". He also told us "whoever interprets the Qur'an from his own opinion has erred, even if he is correct".

He (pbuh) also warned us that there would be much differing and division after his death (he in fact said that Muslims would divide into 73 groups) so he advised Muslims to hold fast to what he and his disciples were upon.

Differing and division manifest themselves if and when these fundamental principles are strayed from.

**RETIRED...**

"Have not those who disbelieve known that the heavens & the earth were joined together as one united piece, then We (Allah) parted them? And We have made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe?" (Qur'an 21:30)

Sig too big, images removed. - SN

"Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure--one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.” (David Rockefeller)

On the philosophic level, for a starting point, you have to presuppose that your senses and faculties are functioning and showing you an accurate view of reality and a real world around you...and that you aren't insane (Shutter Island) or in a world of someone else's making (Inception) or being completely manipulated (The Matrix).

This isn't a universally held belief: Traditional Buddhists for one don't believe in the real existence of a physical reality. In this one area at least, Buddhists don't depend on a presupposition for their philosophy, while Westerners do.

You also have to presuppose that your intellect and ideas should be used in the world to create and change reality. Again this is not a belief universally held: Eastern practices like Mantras and Trancedental Meditation support the idea that thought should be eliminated to reach a transformation.

nah that's a bunch of BS. We can confirm our observations about the rest of the world by communicating with others. You could say that the others might be an illusion. But then we have to open the door to a million other mights that you could consider, and there's no reason to consider any of them unless there is a reason. Repeated and shared observations are the best we can do, and have proved effective so far. There's nothing faithy about believing in gravity. Everyone I have ever known agress that if you release an object in the air, it will fall to the ground.